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Monday, August 04, 2008

This is WAY cool! I haven't blogged for a while, but I just had to share this! Ferrofluid is a liquid that becomes polarised in the presence of a magnetic field. Here's the technical definition, straight from Wikipedia: "Ferrofluids are composed of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid, usually an organic solvent or water. The particles are coated with a surfactant to prevent their agglomeration. Although the name may suggest otherwise, ferrofluids do not display ferromagnetism, since they do not retain magnetization in the absence of an externally applied field. In fact, ferrofluids display (bulk-scale) paramagnetism, and are often referred to as being "superparamagnetic" due to their large magnetic susceptibility."

A bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo to me, I'm afraid, but the behaviour of the fluid is fascinating to watch. This YouTube clip is wonderfully entertaining and demonstrates the fluid's seemingly impossible properties. There are lots of examples on YouTube, accompanied — not surprisingly — by abundant debate re whether or not it's CGI fakery. There's even a television commercial using the fluid.

Kinda reminds me of those 50's Wooly Willy toys we had as kids, with a goofy-looking guy and iron filings you dragged around with a magnet, to give him hair and a beard.

Ain't the web grand?! Every now and then, one tends to forget the incredible marvels this technology has brought to our desktops.

5 comments:

This material is actually being "researched" by the US Government. They are putting some serious research time/money into trying to adapt it's properties into a light-weight and comfortable bullet/frag proof body armor.

Pam, I am a newcomer to your blog. I just snagged your 3-column blog HTML (and thank you so much for sharing it!), but I'm having a weird issue that no matter how long I search and how much I tweak, I can't seem to resolve.

1. I don't have a quick edit pencil showing up for my posts.

And

2. My "comment form message" doesn't show up when my comment form is embedded below the post.

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About Me

Professional writer, photographer, speaker, and educator, Pam Blackstone is published in a variety of print and electronic media. Her net search site, WebLens.org, is popular with casual surfers and serious researchers alike. Pam's professional site is at Shutterscribe and her digital art is at Fractallicious.